I think we have all acknowledge that Deez. 6 point gap, a draw at the Camp Nou and not even at full strength. Lovely stuff. This is just a deeper look at what could have been/nitpicking/Hala being bored.

Also, it is identical until you view the left side of each map. Marcelo is always supported by someone on the left in the 1st two maps. The one against Barcelona, Marcelo is literally by himself which is odd to me considering Zidane usually likes to have a stable approach in more challenging games.

I dont think you can "blame" Marcelo for his positioning when it was clearly a team design, in that we overload the midfield with Isco-Modric-Kovacic, and both CR and Benzema took on central positions. If not for Marcelo willingness to move forward and will and to create width, we would have had serious troubles.

He did so either per his coach instructions (seriously doubt it) or as a reaction to the game, like the instinctive player that he is. I think it's the latter, specially as i recall CR very clearly started the game playing on the left, and then slowly moved inside. I think the idea was to adopt a shape similar than what we had vs Atletico, some kind of 4231 with Isco n10, but Ronaldo is no Bale playing wide, and benzema was certainly no CR in that game vs atleti.

I did not have a issue with his positioning, specially when barca couldnt take advantage of it.

That formation looks awfully chaotic. I do not see a single similarity with our "best performance" other than Carvajal and Lucas adopting the same position in every single one of those games. Against Atleti and LaReal we clearly played a 4141 which was backed up by the average positions of our players. Against Barca well other than Isco playing DM, Marcelo playing LB/LW hybrid and Benz/Ronaldo playing the same position there was nothing wrong with it